Editorial

Holiday gaining significance with Mexican heritage

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Some local establishments are celebrating Cinco de Mayo on Saturday, as part or separately from McCook's "Party on the Bricks" celebration of our 125th birthday.

But what does the "Fifth of May" mean, and why do we celebrate it?

In case you didn't already know, it's a national holiday in Mexico, celebrates the legendary Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, in which a Mexican force of 4,500 men faced 6,000 well-trained men of the French Army. The battle lasted four hours and ended in a victory for the Mexican Army under Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza. Along with Mexican Independence Day on Sept. 16, Cinco de Mayo has become a time to celebrate Mexican heritage and culture.

Why's it important here?

For a start, there were 26.8 million U.S. residents of Mexican origin in 2005. These residents constituted 9 percent of the nation's total population.

And, some 16.9 million people of Mexican origin lived either in California (10.4 million) or Texas (6.6 million). People of Mexican origin made up more than one-quarter of the residents of these two states (the numbers don't quite add up, because of rounding).

They're younger, averaging 25.5 years of age, compared to 36.4 years for the population as a whole.

But, of Mexican-American civilians 18 or older, 609,000 were were military veterans.

Of people of Mexican descent who are 25 and older, 1.1 million have a bachelor's degree or higher, including 300,000 who have a graduate degree.

And, among households where the householder is of Mexican origin, 36 percent consist of a married-couple family with its own children younger than 18. For all households, the percentage was 22 percent in 2005. The average size is 4.0 people for families of Mexican origin, compared to 3.2 percent in all families.

According to the Census, the median household income in 2005 for households with a householder of Mexican origin was $35,464.

To earn that money, 14 percent of employed civilians of Mexican heritage 16 or older work in managerial, professional or related occupations, 24 percent work in service occupations, 20 percent in sales and office occupations, 19 percent in construction, extraction, maintenance and repair; and 21 percent in production, transportation and material moving occupation.

And, 69 percent of such civilians 16 or older are in the labor force, compared to 66 percent for the population as a whole. There were 12.2 million people people of Mexican heritage in the labor force, or about 8 percent of the total American labor force.

Cinco de Mayo? From those numbers, it's apparent that it's something worth celebrating.

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